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Mayor Brown urges assault weapons ban and gives details on a new police unit aimed at combating white supremacy

Mayor Brown joined the victim's families of the racially motivated domestic terror attack on May 14 as President Biden highlighted the Safer Communities Act.

BUFFALO, N.Y. — Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown praised President Biden Monday from the Buffalo Niagara International Airport after he returned from a ceremony that highlighted the recently signed bipartisan Safer Communities Act

"I know this is just a step of it, but just to get the ball rolling with critically important victims families felt seen and heard," Mayor Brown said.

President Biden also said an outright ban on assault weapons needed to happen. Mayor Brown echoed the President's sentiment. 

"An assault weapons ban is certainly something that is necessary," Mayor Brown said. "It just doesn't make sense, enough is enough, And people that attended the ceremony at the White House were very pleased to hear the President talk about that focus.

During the ceremony at the White House, former Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell Whitfield Jr received applause from the crowd, comprised of other victims' families of other gun violence incidents, as he said what more needs to be done in the country. 

"We must address white supremacy and direct domestic terrorism," Whitfield said while at the podium. "We have a leading threat to our homeland and our way of life, so we must continue to fight."

Mayor Brown also echoed the statement from Whitfield.  

"It is a focus that, again, needs to be on the federal radar screen to try to prevent white supremacy to prevent the proliferation, the spread of white supremacy through social media online," Mayor Brown said. 

Brown went on to say that the Buffalo Police Department will create a unit that will monitor, as he called it, chatter on social media that can hopefully identify potential criminals before they can cause violence in the community. 

"We are bringing in new detectives and we will have a unit that will be focused on identifying individuals who have been red-flagged to make sure that our police department has up-to-date information on those individuals," Brown said. 

The Erie County Legislature last week approved $1M in funding for the Sheriff's Office to create a behavioral threat assessment team, whose goal is to identify threats before they can be carried out. 

Brown says he hopes the Buffalo Police Department and Erie County Sheriff's Office can work together to identify would-be threats. 

"We'll be looking at white supremacy, looking at threats, looking at things online, so that we can be preventative so that we can get ahead of that kind of chatter in this community that could play out in a tragic way," Mayor Brown said.

Mayor Brown did not provide a timetable as to when this new unit will be operational, or how much it will cost. 2 On Your Side has followed up with a city spokesperson to learn more. 

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